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Few stables can ever have worked under the suspicion and disapproval surrounding Sheikh Mohammed’s Newmarket operation this year. Success alone cannot repair an image shattered by steroid abuse, yet the results produced in trying circumstances suggest the future may be far rosier than many considered possible.

The two Godolphin yards have between them achieved 52 two-year-old winners, at a strike rate of better than 25 per cent. There have been 30 for Saeed Bin Suroor and 22 for the rookie trainer, Charlie Appleby, since he inherited a supposedly poisoned chalice from the disgraced Mahmood Al Zarooni.